Community Blog

The Meaning of Asian Pacific Island Heritage Month

May 12, 2020

What does Asian Pacific Islander (API) Heritage Month mean to me? To be honest, I didn’t know that there was such a thing until I moved to Seattle. Upon learning about it, I remember feeling a mix of surprise, intrigue, pride, and confusion. In trying to understand how I missed this growing up, I found out that where I grew up in Wisconsin, API populations are less than 4%; in the greater Puget Sound region, that figure is almost triple at 10% in King County and 16% in Pierce County.

Centering Environmental Justice on this 50th Earth Day

April 22, 2020

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (the Agency) is committed to environmental justice, so no communities within our region face disproportionate environmental impacts. The very first Earth Day had environmental justice at its core. In 1970, when the first Earth Day commenced, millions of people used their voices to demand a healthy, clean environment.

The Need For Health Equity Has Never Been Greater

April 8, 2020

On an early Sunday morning in February, Tania Park, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency’s Equity and Community Engagement Manager, and I volunteered for the Seattle/King County Health Clinic. It’s an annual four-day clinic hosted by the Seattle Center Foundation at Seattle Center to provide essential medical services to those who need it the most. Anyone is eligible to receive medical, dental, or optical assistance free of charge. For many, the clinic is the only time each year they can afford these services.

STEM in Lakewood

March 11, 2020

Last month the Lochburn Middle School in Lakewood organized a Science Fair for their STEM night and some of us from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (Gail Pethe, Madeline Camp, Sarah Waldo and I) hosted an interactive booth at the event. It has been many years since I have been at a science fair, so it was a very nostalgic experience. However, the middle school students exceeded all my expectations of the projects we would see at the science fair.

Lunar New Year

February 10, 2020

The Chinatown-International District in Seattle, WA is a focus community of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. As focus community, the Agency aims to create awareness, provide access, support community empowerment, invest in action, and ultimately improve the air quality within Chinatown-International District. We do this in a myriad of ways including the most recent Lunar New Year Celebration hosted by the Chinatown-International District Business Improvement Area.

What Do We Look Like n the Eyes of Injustice

February 7, 2020

At the 17th Annual Lakewood Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, Christian Paige asked the crowd “What do you look like in the eyes of your enemy?” Paige is an Emmy-nominated spoken word poet and Lakewood native. He went on to question what he might look like to oppression, poverty, white supremacy, eviction, and homelessness.

The Kids Are Alright

January 20, 2020

Isha Khanna and Christina Bachiller represented the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency at the Environmental Leaders Summit hosted by the YMCA Earth Service Corps. There were four sessions, each lasting 25 minutes where they facilitated discussions around the topic “The Air Up There” with students from around Washington. The groups consisted of approximately 5-8 people, mostly high school students.